M5 MacBook Air Launch Date, Design, Price and Performance Details Revealed

Apple could unveil the M5 MacBook Air as early as next week, according to a MacRumors report published on 26 February, after CEO Tim Cook teased product announcements set to start on Monday.​

That matters because, while the spotlight is expected to fall on a separate 'low-cost MacBook,' MacRumors says the MacBook Air refresh would bring meaningful internal upgrades that change how the machine feels day to day, even if it looks exactly the same on a café table. None of this is confirmed yet, so everything should be taken with a grain of salt.​

The short version is this. MacRumors expects an M5 chip inside the next MacBook Air, broadly the same design in 13-inch and 15-inch sizes, familiar storage tiers, and pricing that starts where it already does, with a potential sting in the tail if memory upgrade costs rise.​

M5 MacBook Air Performance Gets The Loudest Upgrade

MacRumors reports that the next-generation MacBook Air will adopt Apple's M5 chip, which Apple introduced last year in the iPad Pro and MacBook Pro models. It is the kind of spec-sheet move Apple loves, a clean swap that instantly repositions a laptop without selling a new lifestyle fantasy.​

On paper, MacRumors says Apple's M5 chip uses third-generation 3-nanometre technology and features up to a 10-core CPU and up to a 10-core GPU, with '3.5x faster performance than the M4 chip'. It also claims the M5's multithreaded CPU performance is up to 15 percent faster than the M4, while GPU performance is 30 percent faster.​

MacRumors adds that Apple added a Neural Accelerator to each GPU core to improve the speed of GPU-based AI workloads. It puts unified memory bandwidth at 153GB/s, described as close to a 30 percent improvement over the M4's memory bandwidth, and argues that Apple's unified memory architecture makes that upgrade meaningful for on-device AI models, GPU performance, and multithreaded app performance.​

Memory options, at least at the starting line, look steady. MacRumors says RAM will continue to start at 16GB, with 24GB and 32GB available as upgrades.​

There are also gaming and graphics notes that feel slightly out of character for the Air's historically quiet personality, yet they keep cropping up in Apple's recent chip messaging. MacRumors points to third-generation ray tracing, second-generation dynamic caching, and enhanced shader cores as improvements for gaming and other system-intensive tasks. It also says the updated 16-core Neural Engine is more energy-efficient than before, which could mean improved battery life.​

Storage, by contrast, sounds like a copy-and-paste job from last year, which is not necessarily a criticism. MacRumors expects storage tiers to start at 256GB, with 512GB, 1TB, and 2TB available as upgrade options.​

M5 MacBook Air Design And Price Stay Familiar, For Better Or Worse

Anyone hoping Apple might use this refresh to chase a sleeker silhouette is likely to be disappointed. MacRumors notes that the MacBook Air got a design overhaul in 2022 and says there are no signs Apple is planning an updated chassis in 2026, adding that Apple often uses the same design for several years and ties design refreshes to major new features.​

The more tantalising design talk, in MacRumors' telling, is being pushed back. It says there are rumours the MacBook Air will get an OLED display sometime after Apple launches new MacBook Pro models with OLED technology in late 2026, suggesting the wait for a major visual change may be tied to that shift.​

For this year, MacRumors expects Apple to stick with the same 13-inch and 15-inch size options. Both models are said to keep the aluminium unibody design and fanless thermal system, alongside a Retina LCD display.

Ports and everyday hardware sound unchanged too, with MacRumors saying the MacBook Air is likely to continue to offer two Thunderbolt 4 USB-C ports and the same speaker, microphone, and camera setup.​

Pricing is where the rumour mill meets the real world. MacRumors says MacBook Air pricing is not expected to change and should continue to start at $1,099. But it also flags a possibility that memory upgrades will be more expensive, citing DRAM shortages that have driven prices up.​

So when might it land? MacRumors says Tim Cook teased product announcements set to start on Monday, and on that basis suggests the MacBook Air could appear as soon as next week. If Apple does pull the trigger, the most interesting part may not be the chassis at all, but whether this update finally makes the Air feel less like the sensible choice and more like the obvious one.